Fragments
by Nomad1
Summary: Set several weeks post "Abyss". Jack wakes in the infirmary with no knowledge of how he got there. Dark themes.
1. Part 1

** Fragments **

By Nomad  
May 2008

**Spoilers**: Set during season six. Big spoilers for _Abyss_; medium big for _Cold Lazarus_ and _Meridian_; minor for _A Matter of Time_.  
**Disclaimer**: The Stargate franchise belongs to many people, none of whom are me. Characters, settings and concepts borrowed for fun, not profit.  
**Warnings**: This story addresses dark themes that some people would prefer to be specifically warned about. However, said dark themes are at the core of the story's mystery element and I'd really rather not spoil that. So, uh, consider this a non-specific warning for "stuff that would ordinarily merit a specific warning", and tread carefully if you know you might need to.

* * *

**Part I**

_Beep_.

Oh, it's too early for this.

_Beep_.

What day is it? Did he set the alarm wrong by accident?

_Beep_.

He must have done, because there's no way this is an ordinary hour of the morning. His eyelids are gummed down like stamps.

_Beep_.

Somebody's speaking. Dammit. Fell asleep with the TV on again. That's sad, Jack. Real get a life territory.

A life. Had one of those, didn't he? Had a wife and kid. That didn't end up so well.

_Beep_.

...Sounds a lot like the Doc, actually.

Hey, Doc. Are you sure you should be in my bedroom? People might talk.

_Beep_.

While you're here, could you turn off that alarm? It's getting annoying. And that drill. Yeah, the one that's right behind my head. Thanks.

_Beep_.

I'll be up in five minutes. I swear.

_Beep_...

* * *

Ah, the infirmary ceiling. His old nemesis.

Jack gave it a baleful glare. He'd gotten to see entirely too much of it during his lengthy stay after his happy fun time at chez Baal.

The thing was, he'd also gotten out. He distinctly remembered a trip to Minnesota that was not so much relaxing as twitchy, and his subsequent return to duty. Mostly achieved, admittedly, by the fine art of lying his ass off, but he considered that preemptive rather than deceptive. He _would_ be fine, eventually, and that would be best achieved by getting back into the old routine, so what was the point in muddying the waters?

So. What was he doing back here?

He polled his brain for details of whatever mishap had put him back in the infirmary, and came up with a bigger blank than usual. PX-something, trees, a temple building, Carter babbling about energy signals... They could be mission memories, but they could equally well be SG-1's greatest hits. Nothing specific was swimming to the forefront.

Okay. Time for the body to check in. Item the first: honking great headache. Item the second: catheter. Yay. Item the third: knees? Jack tested them, and found no worse than the usual lingering ache.

Nothing else was ringing the alarm bells, so the smart money went down on head injury. Again.

And here came the lovely Janet Fraiser to present him with his prize.

"Colonel." The Doc seemed oddly terse and formal, and he wondered what he'd done to piss her off this time. Probably just landed back in her infirmary too soon after the last time.

"Doc. Just couldn't get enough of my smiling face?"

He never learned, did he?

The Doc didn't crack a smile, not that he'd truly expected her to. "How are you feeling?"

Funny. Most days she didn't bother asking him to volunteer his state, just tortured him into submission. They'd come to a tacit agreement during his lengthy post-Baal incarceration that if she didn't bother to ask, he wouldn't bother to lie, and they'd both be much happier.

"Oh, you know, same old, same old... why am I here?"

She met his eyes for the first time, a brief and startled flash of brown. "You don't remember anything?"

Her gaze skittered away again almost immediately, and that set off the warning bells. Fraiser was nothing if not direct. Jack struggled to sit up. "What happened?"

"It's probably an aftereffect of the trauma," she said, instead of answering him. "You need to rest, Colonel. Don't try and get up."

As a calming statement, it had the opposite effect. A strangling panic dropped over him. "What happened to my team?" He craned around trying to see the other beds, but he was in his own little private section here and he couldn't tell if anyone else was bed-bound.

"What?" She seemed momentarily flustered by the question.

"Where's Carter? Teal'c-?" He faltered with his lips around the sound of the D. "What happened to the rest of SG-1?"

Fraiser's confusion cleared, and she stepped forward to press him back down to the bed. "Sir, SG-1 are fine. You weren't injured off-world."

There was an odd look in her eye, something uncomfortably like pity, and his instinct was to shrink away from it. "What-?" he began feebly, but she shushed him.

"Get some rest, Colonel," she said, leaning over him, a note of command in the words.

Jack closed his eyes because it was easier than trying to figure out the alternatives.

* * *

Drifting...

Gravity, a vast, snatching hand, slamming him hard against the web.

Pinned, helpless, acid burning...

"You're not really here, Jack." The glow that clings to Daniel isn't light, but something else. "None of this is real."

"I'm here." But is he lying on the floor looking up, or lying on the ceiling looking down? "I'm real. You're not."

Daniel's eyes are the only blue in the whole brown world. "You're real. But you're not the man they think you are."

There's only one answer to that. "I'm who I've always been."

And Daniel smiles, like he's cracked the code of life, the world and everything. "Yes."

When he touches the web, it crumbles away into sparks, and then Jack's falling, falling, falling, once again.

* * *

He awoke in the infirmary. There was somebody sitting silent beside him, and he thought _Carter_ before he'd even turned his head.

Jack was going to have to go with ESP on that one, because ascribing it to sense of smell was kind of creepy.

He watched her undetected a few moments, a guilty pleasure. Not in an inappropriate way - although looking at Carter was never exactly a hardship - it was just that he'd developed a slightly unhealthy obsession with seeing and hearing his teammates breathe. Breathing was good. Breathing was thoroughly encouraged. And not breathing was kinda panic-inducing. The least said about that time he'd accidentally-on-purpose tripped over Teal'c during a particularly deep kelno'reem session, the better.

Carter was staring into space. So far as Jack could tell she wasn't injured, but she was looking a little frazzled. She'd either changed her hair or slept in it, although it would take a braver man than him to risk inquiring which. And... had she lost weight?

It was craning his head to try and get a better viewing angle that brought his wakefulness to her attention. She jumped, pulling her hand out from under her chin. "Colonel!"

Jeez, what was it, formal address day? Maybe Hammond had sent out a memo. Jack spared her a small but genuine quirked smile. "Hey, Carter."

"Sir. It's good to see you awake." The smile she gave him in return was oddly tentative, a world away from the usual dazzling beam. Not that he'd seen that one a lot this year. And yes, dammit, she _had_ lost weight. She looked decidedly gaunt, dark smudges under her eyes.

He hoped she hadn't been worrying about him. They'd all gotten a little clingy since Daniel had... gone. Although a clingy Teal'c was something it took a very discerning eye to see.

He was not, however, seeing it at this moment.

"Where's Teal'c?"

A flicker more hesitation than he liked to see in his 2IC. "He's off-world."

Jack's eyebrows lowered. "Without us?"

"Something came up," she said evasively. He trusted that this was just the usual 'let's keep Jack out of the loop while he's recovering' BS, and let it go.

"And D- Jonas?" He covered quickly, but maybe not quick enough. He couldn't tell if Carter's eyebrow scrunch was because of the slip, or surprise that he was even asking about Jonas.

"He's with Teal'c."

"Of course he is."

Jack hadn't exactly wanted a visit from him anyway. It wasn't that he didn't _like_ the guy...

Well, okay, it was. But he was man enough to admit that it was an entirely irrational dislike, born out of the way he had the nerve to always be hanging around and grinning and being agreeable and _not being Daniel_.

After they'd exhausted the small talk, the rather limp conversation dried up. Carter's expression, on the other hand, was looking decidedly damp. A fact that he viewed with some alarm. If she cried he was probably going to have to hug her or pat her on the back or something, and that couldn't end well for either of them.

"What the hell happened to me, Carter?" he asked.

He didn't expect that example of his usual subtlety to be the trigger that set her off. Her eyes pooled with suppressed tears as she forced a weak smile. "You were in an accident, sir."

Not good enough. Not coupled with that expression. "What kind of accident?" he demanded sharply.

Carter drew back, as if physical distance would make the question easier to evade. "Sir, I'm really not sure-"

"Carter." Kid glove time was over, and dammit, he wanted answers. "_Tell_ me."

Unlike the Doc, Carter obeyed him far too readily to be able to look away from the 'that's an order' stare. But she held silent past the usual breaking point, and that wasn't good. Only two things trumped the CO card, and those were orders from higher up the food chain or, worse, the 'it's for your own good' defence.

Jack really _hated_ it when it was for his own good.

"Carter?" he prompted, with the last of his flagging patience. She looked like she was finally about to speak-

And then the Doc bustled in, breaking the moment. "Colonel. Time for your neurological check."

Round two over. Still no score to Jack.

* * *

His third visitor, Jack didn't know at all. Which didn't preclude him forming an opinion.

First strike against him: guy was wearing a suit. Not a crime out in the wider world, but suspicious down here. Second, he was plastered with the kind of neutral smile that made Jack itch to punch it away. Third strike, he had a goatee. Jack hadn't always subscribed to the facial hair-based method of classifying evilness, but ever since Baal, he'd been leaning that way.

"Ah, Colonel. Good to see you awake at last."

Jack wasn't sure he liked the implication of having been seen... un-awake. He glowered. "I'd say it's a pleasure, but we haven't been introduced."

"Of course." Annoyingly, the smile didn't flicker. "I'm Doctor Andrews."

And 'doctor' minus scrubs and or uniform equals...

"You're a shrink," he said flatly.

"I'm a psychiatrist," the man agreed pleasantly, and took a seat by the bed. Uninvited, Jack might add.

"That's nice for you. And you're here _because_...?"

Andrews ignored the tone, scooting his chair closer to the bed. "I thought we should have a little talk before you were released."

"Oh, you did, did you?" What the hell was this crap? Hammond _knew_ how he felt about ambush therapy sessions.

Andrews' plastic smile faded into a more solemn expression. "Jack... why do you think that you're here?"

Why did he think that was a leading question? "In the great scheme of things, or-?" No reaction. He tensed up a little. "I had an accident." The words came out a little more tentative than he wanted, not yet bolstered by any returning memory.

"If that's what you want to call it, then yes, you did."

What the hell was _that_ supposed to mean? Jack scowled, losing what little patience he'd had. He struggled to sit up.

"Look, Andrews, I don't know why the hell you're here-"

"Colonel." Andrews' tone was soft, but enough to shut him up. "Doctor Fraiser informs me that you don't remember anything. Now, I don't know if that's really true - maybe it is. Certainly, with the trauma that you suffered, it's a possibility. But the fact that you don't remember the incident doesn't erase the state of mind that led up to it."

His pale grey eyes met Jack's head on. "You're not here because of any accident, Jack. You're here because you tried to kill yourself."


	2. Part 2

**Part II**

He struggles against the web.

Knives, tearing through his skin. Death. Light. Questions. _What is the name of your symbiote? What was your mission? What did you want with my slave?_

"What are you doing here, Jack?"

Daniel again. Maybe Jack smiles, but he can't feel his face. "Just hangin' out."

And it can't be the real Daniel, because he doesn't scrunch his nose and he can't be distracted. "You're not supposed to be here."

"You're not letting me leave."

"I'm not the one who's keeping you here."

"Then who the hell is?"

Daniel smiles that bittersweet smile. "Find out."

The world shatters.

* * *

Jack was bored. Also pissed.

He'd tossed Andrews out, or rather glared daggers until Fraiser had come along and done the tossing for him. The last thing he needed was a psych analysis. He wasn't suicidal! Other things ending in -cidal, possibly. Many of them directed at Andrews.

He still didn't remember the details of his accident, but it was clear someone had leapt on it as an excuse to discredit him. His money was on Kinsey, or Simmons, or some other arm of the NID, or... Okay, that was a depressingly long laundry list.

He should have known his political enemies would try something like this. He'd been braced for the shuffle-off to retirement ever since his knee had crapped out on him. The docs had warned that if it went again, it was going to go _spectacularly_, and SG-1 being a member down was a perfect excuse for a tactful little reorg. The Kanan and Baal debacle was an even better one, and he was still amazed at the paperwork miracles Hammond had worked to get him back in the field with the minimum of competency assessments.

Assessments that he could have passed, but not honestly. The truth was, Jack _knew_ he wasn't a hundred percent yet. Jonas was too new to see it, but Jack was well aware that Carter and Teal'c were silently picking up his slack. The only reason he could live with letting them was that they both needed him to pretend he was fine even more than he needed to do it.

When your dog was still learning to walk with a missing leg, it needed all of the other three, no matter how wobbly. So Jack hadn't questioned his luck.

And now that lack of foresight had come back and bitten his ass. He should have known the NID wouldn't be content to wave retirement papers; not with Hammond and sometimes even the President in Jack's corner. No, they'd rather take the opportunity for a lot more of a sure bet.

So far as Jack was concerned, the only question surrounding his circumstances was whether his framers had taken advantage of a real accident, staged things for exactly this outcome, or intended to it to be a 'real' suicide and made a hash of the job. First option meant they were improvising, third pointed to further attempts on his life, and piggy in the middle was _bad_ news. If they were intending to stitch him up on mental health grounds, then Andrews was not just a well-meaning patsy but probably in someone's pocket.

First order of business: get the hell out of the infirmary. He felt fine, anyway, apart from that damn headache. What kind of suicide attempt was he supposed to have made? No cuts, bruises, or broken bones, and he was pretty sure he'd feel a whole lot worse than this if he'd just had his stomach pumped.

He knew there was only one way out he'd ever have taken anyway, and that was the bullet that'd had his name on it ever since its chamber-mate took the life of his son. Maybe it was sick that he still had the gun and sicker that he kept it loaded, but it was a talisman _against_ suicide as much as any route to it. A little reminder ticking away at the back of his mind that said, _it's still here, but so am I_.

Which was exactly the kind of detail slime like Andrews would drag out as proof of his instability. The whole reason that Jack hated shrinks was the way they wanted to knock down your house of cards because you weren't coping the way they thought you _should_ be coping - never mind if your way worked. If they smashed all his walls down and tried to build him up again, there wouldn't be the raw materials left to make a new man. He was keeping himself together with spit and willpower.

And he _resented_ the attempt to make it seem like he wasn't making a good enough job of it.

Jack hauled himself out of bed and detached the appropriate monitors, bringing an influx of nurses.

"Colonel, you really shouldn't be out of bed." One brave woman attempted to tackle him. He gave his best command glower, trying to ignore the fact that he was in a hospital gown.

"Lieutenant, there's nothing wrong with me that an aspirin won't fix-" a really _big_ aspirin - "and I'm not about to be tied to the infirmary on the say-so of some two-bit shrink who doesn't know his ass from his elbow!" Okay, getting a little bit loud toward the end there, but he thought it was justified.

"Doctor Andrews doesn't have a say in when you're released, I do." Doctor Fraiser arrived, her tone crisp and deadly. "And I _was_ coming to give you a final check before clearing you, but if you can't be trusted to obey basic medical instructions-"

"Doc, I'm _fine_." He irritably pushed her hand away. "You checked me an hour ago, and an hour before that. I was fine when I woke up, I was fine the day after I woke up, I am still fine!"

"I'll be the judge of that." She narrowed her eyes just to show who was boss, but relented. "Very well, Colonel, I'm releasing you to your quarters, but I expect you to report back here at 0900 hours tomorrow morning."

He curled his lip. No way was that medically justified. "So you can poke and prod me some more? Whatever you're looking for, you're not going to find it a penlight."

It was a clear challenge to raise the subject that was lurking unspoken, but she didn't rise to the bait. "0900 hours, Colonel," she repeated, her mouth a thin line of disapproval.

Jack got out while the getting was good.

* * *

As it turned out, the getting wasn't all that good. He seemed to have acquired an airman with a serious crush, and he was fairly sure it wasn't his new cologne. The guy followed him not-so-discreetly down to the locker room, and even lurked in the doorway while he was taking a damn shower. Jack was tempted to do a headstand just to confuse the hell out of guy, but his abused brain probably wouldn't thank him for the blood rush.

The man followed him to his quarters, too, but at least he didn't try to come in. Unfortunately, it seemed that some stealth interior decorators had gotten there first. His room had been stripped of just about every personal trinket he'd had stashed in it. He could only assume they'd given the job of suicide-proofing to an over-anxious Carter and she'd gotten _really_ creative thinking up what he could do to himself with a Gameboy and a yo-yo.

The thought lost any giggle factor fast. Carter had been beating herself up for suggesting the plan with Kanan, even though it was hardly her fault. Because while, okay, he wouldn't like to share with her the results of an internal poll on the "better snaked than dead" issue, the fact was that Hammond or anyone else could have pushed the duty button just as easily. He was dishearteningly predictable that way.

He kind of wished it _had_ been someone else, though, because Carter already had a big enough helping of guilt sundae from not being able to magically fix Daniel with the Goa'uld healing device. The fact that her dad and, hello, Selmac hadn't done any better remained lost on her, because Carter had quite the ego on the quiet and was easily convinced that if anything ever went wrong, it was because _she_ hadn't fixed it good enough.

Which only made him more pissed at whoever had laid this latest crap on the both of them.

Jack turned about to leave his denuded quarters. First order of the day: convince Carter that A, this was Not Her Fault; B, there _was_ no this to be anyone's fault; and C, furnishing him with the alleged details of the this that hadn't happened was her sworn duty as his second in command.

There was a knock at the door. Dammit. His shoulders sagged.

Okay, make that second order of the day. _First_ order of the day, punch out whoever the hell was checking up on him.

General Hammond. Maybe not.

Jack stepped back, disconcerted. That the General would want to check in with him was a given, but he wasn't usually in the habit of making house calls.

"General! Er, welcome to my humble abode." He scratched the back of his head. "Somewhat... excessively humble at the moment. I would offer you my hospitality, but half my stuff seems to have gone missing."

George Hammond was genetically incapable of looking shifty. "I apologise, Colonel, but it was necessary to have your home and quarters searched for any evidence relating to the incident. If you report anything that's missing, I'll do what I can to see it's replaced."

Jack couldn't tell if the 'incident' euphemism was just Hammond's old school manners or a hint that he, too, was reluctant to believe the surface version of events. "Thank you, sir." The General closed the door behind him, and Jack adopted the 'awaiting orders' posture he'd copied off his old dog Scotch. If only he could get his ears to stick up like that too. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes. Sit down, Jack." Hammond followed his own advice and took a chair. Jack sank down slowly into the one next to it, getting an ominous feeling that was more than just the click of his knees. He didn't know what this conversation was, but he was already wishing they could have it in the General's office where there was the comforting distance of a desk between them.

When Hammond met his eyes, there was a tiredness in his face that Jack didn't like at all. It took the General an uncharacteristically long moment to speak.

"I feel like I failed you, son," he said finally. Jack found it suddenly hard to hold his gaze, and focused on the same over-the-shoulder area he did when he was receiving a formal commendation or a dressing down. He felt a bizarre, illogical sense of shame that took him back to standing up in front of his father after some hotheaded teenage exploit.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, sir," he said, both disingenuously and truthfully.

General Hammond sighed, and, shockingly, laid his hand on top of Jack's. "You know, I'd like to think that if there was something wrong, you knew you could talk to me about it. Why didn't you, Jack? Why didn't you talk to anyone?"

There was more genuine dismay in his voice than anger or confusion, and it left Jack feeling thick-tongued and dizzy. "Sir, I-" He shook his head miserably. "Honest to God, I have _no idea_ what's happening." Ever since he'd first woken in the infirmary, the world had been making precious little sense to him.

This was nuts. This was more than nuts. This was goddamn _coconuts_. An entire tree full of the things, bouncing off the back of his head.

Hammond gave an unhappy smile. "I know." He withdrew the hand. "Doctor Fraiser warned us that you were likely to experience some memory loss from the trauma." He took a deep breath. "Which leaves me with a hell of a dilemma, Jack. I cannot in good conscience let you return to duty if your mental state is going to put you or your team in harm's way."

That was a low blow. "Sir, I would never willingly accept an assignment if I thought I would be a danger to anyone else," he said stiffly.

"I know that, son," Hammond said kindly. "But you may not be the best judge of your own state of mind right now."

Jack shook his head. "My state of mind is- Sir, this is a frame-up." He met Hammond's eyes seriously. "This is Kinsey's latest game. It goes on my record I'm allegedly unstable, I can kiss any hope of walking through that gate again goodbye."

Or even staying inside this facility. Top secret military projects, as a rule, did not smile on whackos being permitted access to sensitive information. If he was _lucky_, the service might treat him kindly enough to give him a job shuffling supply requisitions in the butt end of nowhere.

"I understand that." Hammond raised a hand to forestall any interruption. "Which is why, _officially_, Doctor Andrews is working with you to try and help you recover any memories of your accident."

Jack's face twisted with distaste, but Hammond wasn't done. "Jack. You _will_ attend these sessions, and you will abide by Doctor Andrews' recommendations. If you're convinced that there's nothing wrong with you, then you go on and persuade him of that. I'm willing to keep this off the radar for the sake of your career, but if he believes that there is a problem, I'm not going to ignore that."

He grimaced in defeat. "Yes, sir."

Hammond gave a nod, and the matter was closed. He leaned back in his chair. "Ordinarily, Colonel, I'd grant you some leave time, but I'm afraid that's not going to be possible immediately. There's a sensitive situation brewing that requires you specifically."

Jack blinked. "Well, sensitive situations... are known to be my forte," he said uncertainly.

Hammond gave a tight smile. "While you were indisposed-" the Texas drawl covered any fraction of a hesitation that might have preceded the term, "-Supreme Commander Thor made contact with the SGC."

Now this _was_ his kind of sensitive situation. The Asgard had to win the Intergalactic Buddies award for being the only supposed allies Earth had that didn't pat them on the head and tell them to go play with their primitive toys or propose so-called deals that meant 'you get screwed and we enjoy it'. Jack sat forward. "How is the little grey guy?"

"Well, that we don't know. He sent us a holographic communication asking that SG-1 gate to another planet to retrieve an Asgard device. I sent Major Carter with a scientific team, but it seems that Commander Thor was concerned about the technology falling into the wrong hands. The device is protected by an energy shield that Major Carter believes is coded specifically to your DNA."

Jack frowned. "What kind of device?"

"We don't know. But I've got the NID and the President both breathing down the back of my neck on the off-chance it's some kind of Asgard superweapon." His face darkened. "Let's just say there were some plans drawn up for some very unsavory methods of procuring your DNA if we couldn't provide you conscious and cooperative quick enough."

Always the same old song. Jack stood up. "Well, where is this doohickey? I can get geared up-" he started to offer, but wasn't surprised when it was rebuffed.

"You're not going anywhere, Colonel, until Doctor Andrews has cleared you for gate travel." Hammond's face was set in stone. "The NID can wait as long as it takes."

Jack would have been touched... if it wasn't for the apprehension rolling around in his gut. He met Hammond's eyes. "They're the ones behind this," he said again. "This is some scheme of theirs to get control of the artefact."

"I really do hope so." The General stood too, and briefly clasped Jack's arm. "It's good to have you back, son."

The sincerity behind it was discomfiting. Jack saw him out, wondering uneasily what hell the NID had staged to make even his staunchest supporters doubt his sanity.

And trying to ignore the paranoid voice at the back of his mind that questioned whether it had really been staged at all.


	3. Part 3

**Part III**

Before he tackled Carter, Jack needed to fortify himself with a good meal. That not being a practical option while he was confined to the mountain, he settled for a commissary meal. At least it narrowly beat infirmary slop or MREs.

Unfortunately, the commissary meant people. And while at least that gave his unwanted SF prom date half a chance at blending in with the crowd, it seemed that was too little far too late. Everyone was staring, and he was ninety-eight percent sure it wasn't just his own self-consciousness.

Of course, everyone had been staring pretty much non-stop since the Baal thing, and before that there had been a few nervous looks on the tail of his semi-legendary bawling out of several wannabe Daniel replacements.

_Deserved_ bawling out. Jack stood by his original opinion on working with scientists. He didn't know how he'd managed to luck out twice on the trot when SG-1 was formed, but clearly he was still paying for it karmically.

But this wasn't that kind of staring. This was... actually, he had no idea what the hell this was. This wasn't 'Colonel O'Neill's going to flip out and gun us all down any moment' staring. It wasn't even the much more dreaded pity staring. This was 'back from the dead' level staring.

What the _hell_ had happened to him, and how publicly?

The room didn't quite drop to silence when he walked in, but only because some jerk scientist was too busy haranguing the staff about lemon chicken to notice the general hush. Just about every face that Jack recognised was looking at _his_ like it had just crawled out of the sarcophagus. It was enough to make a boy self-conscious. He surreptitiously scraped a thumb over his jaw as he joined the line, just to make sure the nurses hadn't gotten creative with his facial hair while he was at their mercy.

The crowd had the sense to recover from their fumbled conversations, but Jack could still feel the eyes on his back. He was freshly and keenly aware of the absence of Teal'c. There was nothing quite like six foot four of solid Jaffa to encourage people to develop a whole new attitude to privacy.

Teal'c had been shadowing - or rather, overshadowing - Jack around the base ever since he'd returned from his dramatically fubared stay with the Tok'ra. So why wasn't he around now? Carter had said he'd gone off-world, but she hadn't said why. Some threat to Rya'c or Bra'tac? If so, Jack owed her an ear-bashing for hanging around at his bedside instead of going with Teal'c.

Not that he would actually deliver it. Carter had enough guilt to be going on with, and she clearly hadn't taken this latest setback well. He just didn't like the thought of Teal'c being out there without proper backup, dammit. Contrary to his own belief, Teal'c was only _ninety-nine_ percent invincible. And as Daniel had proved, that one percent always caught up with you in the end.

Jack didn't know where Jonas had gotten to, either, but that, he cared less about. If someone had discreetly but firmly discouraged him from turning up at Jack's bedside with an inane smile and effusive well-wishes, then Jack figured he owed them a fruit basket. He could tolerate Quinn's demeanour on a mission, but socialising with someone who was that damn happy about everything was exhausting.

And he was already pretty exhausted. Tiredness tugged, a reminder that he wasn't yet fully recovered from whatever had put him in the infirmary, and the pressure of all the unwanted attention made him want to crawl off into a dark corner somewhere. Being himself, of course, he therefore sat down in the middle of the commissary and ate his meal with casual indifference.

Sometimes he suspected that the only reason he'd survived this long was masochistic stubbornness.

That was why, when he rose and unhurriedly left, he didn't head back to the bed that was beckoning, but instead turned toward Carter's lab. It was guaranteed that she'd be there. In times of angst and distress, Carter took things apart.

Also in times of anger, times of excitement, times of boredom, and times of mellowed out joy at the nature of the universe. Any excuse, she'd be in there. Sometimes Jack envied the way she and D- she could just bury herself in work. God knew there was nothing in his paperwork he could ever find fascinating enough to blot the bad times out.

Not that Carter seemed to be having much success with that this time. She was oblivious to his presence as he leaned against the doorframe and watched for a while, but it clearly wasn't down to an excess of concentration. Even he could see she was fumbling things and trying to fit pieces in back-to-front.

She jumped far more than usual when she finally spotted him. "Sir!" She looked like she couldn't quite decide whether to smile or look alarmed, and settled for a wavery expression in between. "I didn't realise you were out of the infirmary."

"Oh, yes." He bounced on his toes. "Out and..." Jack wasn't sure he liked where this sentence was heading, and yet couldn't quite divert it to any better course, "-proud." He tilted his chin up, daring Carter to comment.

She smiled more genuinely, and ducked her head behind her computer screen. "It's good to have you back, sir."

He hated to break up a nice moment, but it was too good an opportunity to catch her off guard. "Exactly how _long_ have I been gone?" he drawled.

She flinched a little, but got the game face up fast. "Sir..."

Carter had many different intonations of his title. This one meant that she wasn't going to tell him squat, but felt guilty about it.

Jack stepped inside the lab and closed the door. "Carter, I'll lay this out. I have _no idea_ how I ended up in that infirmary bed. They've got me handcuffed to a shrink who's spouting Kinsey's latest crap about a suicide attempt, and somehow even good old George is buying it. So I need your help here, Carter. _What. Happened?_" By the end of the demand he'd graduated to pacing and wild arm flailing.

Carter stood her ground, though she paled considerably. "I'm sorry, sir, I can't tell you," she said miserably.

"This is Andrews' orders, isn't it?" He was sure that the shrink was up to his neck in whatever plot was going on. "Dammit, Carter. Throw me a bone here, because this isn't adding up. I'm supposed to have been so badly injured, and there's not a scratch on me?" He spread his hands, and tried not to let on about the split-second, unexpected flashback to Baal's sarcophagus. "What exactly am I supposed to have done?"

Carter wouldn't meet his eyes. "I used the Goa'uld healing device," she admitted. "There was no _time_, sir, Janet couldn't-" She broke off abruptly, looking like she was about to cry.

Well... hell.

That was an unpleasantly plausible explanation, but Jack still fought against it. He lowered his eyebrows, pressing for the flaw in the story. "I thought you couldn't use it? When Daniel-"

He stopped, already sorry that he'd gone there. Carter looked like she'd been slapped.

"Sir..." she said despairingly, and this time it was the confusing one, the one that he usually interpreted as 'please get out so I can have this breakdown in private' but might in fact mean the exact opposite.

He never knew what to do with an emotional Carter. The instincts he had were all wrong.

Jack raised his hands and physically backed off, signalling his apology without actually having to address the subject. But he held her gaze sincerely. "Carter... this isn't real," he said, as much a promise as a refutation. He willed her to believe him.

She gave him a fragile smile that creased her teary eyes. "I just want you to be okay, sir," she said softly.

And he respected her too much to give a facile promise about that, so he just smiled wryly in return and left.

* * *

The sarcophagus opens onto-

Sunshine.

No. God, not-

The old house.

No.

Sara. Hugging. Happy. He never forgets that. That big, bright blaze of _happy_, the kind that gets you right in the stomach, before-

_No._

There's no gunshot this time, but he's in the house, and this isn't how it happened in real life because he doesn't _know_ how this happened in real life, there's no memory between the shot and seeing Charlie, no journey.

But this time he's travelling down the hall, he's almost at the door, and he knows that when he opens it he'll see-

Daniel. Stepping out in front of him, blocking the way. Face as sad and still as it's never been.

There's no gratitude, only anger. Because what's behind that door doesn't change, doesn't go away if you don't open it, and he has no right, _no right_.

"You weren't here!" And Jack's itching to swing, but you can't hurt empty space.

Empty space full of sad blue. "Neither were you," Daniel says, and pushes him back by the shoulders.

The world falls away.

* * *

Jack awoke sweating and trembling. It took him long, disoriented moments to work out where he was. In the field, he could have been dead.

He sat up and ran his hands over his face. "Crap," he said out loud, more for the reassurance of speech than out of any feeling it would be adequate.

Nightmares were nothing new. Usually, though, they had the decency to stay in their own separate nightmare pockets and not go blending together on him.

The trick with bad memories, Jack had found, was to seal each one in its own individual box, and never, _ever_ step back and take inventory of how many boxes you had. Nobody could cope with remembering dying a dozen deaths. But you could handle it if you only remembered them one at a time.

He had a horrible feeling his boxes were on the verge of overflowing.

His SF minder was going to think he had some kind of an obsessive thing for showering, but it was that or show up at the infirmary stinking of sweat and fear. He barely had time to towel his hair before dashing down to make his 0900 appointment.

Not that the Doc appreciated it. She ran through yet another neuro check - penlight, naturally, included - with a curtness that passed through professionally brisk and made its way out into angry. And Jack, who was still shaken enough that the idea his brain might have leaked out his ears in the night didn't quite seem _entirely_ ludicrous, wasn't even misbehaving.

"You pissed at me, Doc?" he asked quietly. He had to angle his head low to have a chance at meeting her eyes.

She didn't let him, but took a sharp sigh to compose herself before raising her head.

"I'm not annoyed with you, Colonel," she said, and he guessed he believed that. Fraiser was a straight shooter, and if she had a beef, she'd tell him. Loudly and at length. "Just at the situation."

She wouldn't elaborate on that, and he knew that it was pointless trying to make her.

The commissary was less crowded at breakfast, because some of the people in this mountain actually had lives, and those that didn't snatched their food at the asscrack of dawn instead of the lazy side of 0900. There were only a couple of airmen around beside his ever-present hand-holder, and while he could feel their stares they had the sense to look away if he glanced their way. He dared to think he might make it through his oatmeal in peace.

Apparently, the day he learned that lesson about tempting fate was not going to be today.

An empty commissary meant a wide open field for that asshole Andrews to slime up and give him an over-bright smile. "Colonel. Good to see you up and looking so much better."

Jack glowered over his spoonful of oatmeal. "It's funny that you say that, because all of a sudden, my stomach just turned over."

He just kept right on smiling. "I've made you an appointment for eleven o'clock. I'm looking forward to having a chance to talk with you." He dropped a card on the tabletop, leaving Jack with a choice of put up and shut up or start an argument in front of some very interested witnesses. At least one of whom was likely to report his lack of cooperation back to Hammond.

Yay, fun.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," he said, and smiled nastily.

The real reason he hated shrinks was that they were impervious to sarcasm. "Colonel," Andrews said with a polite nod, and withdrew.

Jack used his card to scrape up a few stray blobs of oatmeal from the tabletop.

* * *

He couldn't skip out after giving his word to Hammond, but at least he could arrange to be fashionably late. Unfortunately, his bodyguard had other ideas. At five minutes shy of zero hour, he got a knock from a nervous young airman.

"Uh, sir? I thought I should remind you that you have to see Doctor Andrews at 1100 hours, sir."

"Oh, you did, did you?" Jack showed his teeth, but didn't get much satisfaction from the resultant cower.

He thought about sending Hammond an email to request he be excused psychiatric assessment on the grounds that it made him depressed, but he had a feeling that might just backfire.

He guessed it was shrinky time.

Andrews had installed himself in an office in the butt-end of nowhere, which Jack liked to assume was thanks to Hammond's personal opinion of the man, but was probably due to discretion. Like the entire mountain wasn't already aware that he'd been sent down here. He trusted Hammond's word that the official records would uphold his honour, but the rumour mill obeyed its own laws.

Still, it wasn't like people thinking he was nuts was hot news.

"What, no couch?" Jack said as he walked in. Andrews gave him a thin smile like he was pretending to have a sense of humour. He had his fingertips pressed together, but that lost its effect from other people once you'd seen Teal'c do it.

"Colonel," he said simply. "I appreciate that you don't want to be here. And I hope you're right, and that you're healthy enough that this is a mere formality. But I can't help feeling that you're in denial about the severity of your situation."

Jack snagged a chair, not because he wanted to stay but because making him stand up in front of a desk was only the General's prerogative. "There _is_ no situation. This is a setup. I know it and you know it."

Andrews sat back in his chair, like Jack had somehow given away the first point of the game. "But how can you possibly know that, Colonel, when you yourself don't remember what happened?"

He narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "I know! I know myself. I know what I'm capable of." He thought of gunshots and nuclear weapons, and willed himself not to blink.

Jack knew that he _was_ capable of taking his own life - just as he knew, with gut deep certainty, that he hadn't tried to do it. The difficult part was going to be proving that truth without ever stating the reasoning behind it.

Because, "I wouldn't do that to Carter right now," probably wasn't going to get him signed off on a one way ticket to mental healthsville.

"Perhaps." Andrews had a sympathetic gloss to his eye that made Jack want to get up and punch him. "But Colonel, we're all capable of doing things that seem out of character for us at extremes of stress and emotion. And nobody could argue that the things you've been through are anything less than extreme."

And there Jack was stuck for a response, because if he tried to be flip about Baal this soon, he wasn't going to land the dismount.

When in doubt, attack. "You know, I'm hearing a lot of _talk_ about what I supposedly did, but I've yet to see a single scrap of proof that anything happened at all. So far as I know I could have slipped in the shower."

Andrews sighed heavily, and reached for a laptop that was sat at the edge of the desk facing away from them. "Colonel. I want you to know that showing you this is against my better judgement. But I don't think we're going to move forward until you break past this block of denial."

He started something going with the keyboard, then turned the screen to face Jack. Jack found himself looking at black and white security footage. Soundless, as most of the cameras were in non-vital locations.

This one was about as non-vital as they got: his own office. Not the sort of place that needed to be bugged to pick up scintillating conversation, since he completed all his paperwork in the commissary unless he was avoiding people.

He'd been working in his office quite a lot lately.

He watched his CCTV self walk into the room. He was no expert at reading his own body language, but his instincts started tingling right away. There was a directness of purpose to the way the O'Neill in the video moved. When he entered the paperwork zone, procrastination was usually his middle name.

He watched himself move directly to the desk, sit down, and immediately pull out the drawer. It was obvious just from the angle of his arm what he was reaching in for.

There was no hesitation in this, either. No deep deliberation, no beat of regret or uncertainty. A decision already made.

Gun out. Barrel to the temple.

Fire.

Jack couldn't tell if the feed cut out a microsecond too late, or the aftermath he thought he'd seen was just vivid imagination.

He licked dry lips.

"Good fake," he attempted to say, and found that his voice was almost entirely gone.


	4. Part 4

**Part IV**

The rest of his session with Andrews was a wash. Andrews wouldn't let him watch the tape again, not now he was braced for it and ready to keep an eye out for signs of trickery. And with its so-called evidence fresh in his mind, Jack couldn't help but hop about on the defensive.

He'd learned how to fake shrinks out the hard way in the fragile months post-Iraq: what responses they were looking for, and how long to take building up to them to avoid undue suspicion. The very worst thing you could do was to walk in looking like the picture of mental health. Even if it was God's honest truth, they'd tear you apart looking for what they thought you were hiding. So you had to invent a couple of fake but plausible issues for them to ferret out and resolve. With the lady shrink Hammond had set him up with he'd 'reluctantly' confessed to being nervous inside elevators, and she'd eaten it up.

Elevators he was fine with. The ones on base weren't small enough to be as claustrophobic as the sarcophagus, and it was actually pretty soothing to feel that tangible tug of gravity pulling downward. It was when he was out under open sky that he found himself looking for things to hold onto just in case the gravity flipped. But he'd get over that without outside assistance. He always did.

Jack should have been playing Andrews like a whistle. But that footage had gotten him rattled, and he fell back on his survival instincts. Answer nothing. Admit nothing. Piss 'em off till they give up and just bludgeon you unconscious.

Unfortunately, that last one didn't work so well on shrinks.

Andrews finally rested his forehead in his palm with a faint sigh. "Colonel, this is not an interrogation," he said wearily. "I'm trying to help you. If you're not prepared to work with me, there's no way I can in good conscience allow you to return to active duty."

Jack kept his face impassive. There was no point playing the psychiatrist's games. The existence of that faked up footage was proof enough that there was somebody pulling the strings. Whether Andrews was in on it or merely a dupe, jumping through his hoops wasn't going to get Jack any closer to a clean bill of health.

Someone was determined to not just get him out of the way, but ruin him professionally. This wasn't just politics - it was personal.

It _had_ to be Kinsey.

Andrews pushed back his chair and stood up. "I think, perhaps, we should continue this tomorrow," he said. "I appreciate this is difficult for you to take in. But Colonel, this _is_ very real, and while it may be hard for you to believe it right now, I am _not_ your enemy in this."

And maybe it was true that Andrews wasn't.

But somebody sure as hell was.

* * *

Jack had planned on heading back to his quarters, insofar as he'd planned anything at all. Round about the time he was reaching out to take the doorhandle, he discovered he'd come to his office.

He could have blamed it on muscle memory, if not for the fact that this was one of the places he deliberately visited _least_.

He hadn't paid enough attention to the journey to know if he still had his escort. And it wouldn't exactly be subtle if he swung his head round to check now. But jangling the handle and running away wasn't going to look any better.

Jack opened the door.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected. Bloodstains? Nobody was _that_ lax in their cleaning duties, least of all the military. He wasn't going to find a smoking gun, either. It was probably all bagged up in some evidence lockup somewhere, exhibit A in the railroading of Jack O'Neill into early retirement.

He wondered for a split second if it was _the_ gun, and quickly shoved that thought aside.

That was skirting dangerously close to wondering if it was him who'd pulled the trigger.

The office held no evidence of the scene he'd watched play out on Andrews' laptop. In fact, it held nothing much at all. His papers and his seldom-used computer were all gone. Somebody getting an early jump on clearing out his stuff before he got the boot?

Or the result of a cleanup job after a particularly messy accident?

Jack caught himself rubbing the side of his head. There was no scar there. Nothing. Surely even the Goa'uld hand device couldn't fix that kind of traumatic brain injury. It wasn't a sarcophagus. It didn't bring you back from dead.

The security footage couldn't be real.

So now all he had to do was prove that.

* * *

Jack picked over his lunch without appetite. For a change, it wasn't the rubbery eggs that were bothering him.

He had a sinking feeling that he wasn't going to be able to involve Carter in this.

Normally, it wouldn't even be a question. You needed computer stuff done, you handed it to Carter and waited for the answers to pop out like bread out of a toaster. And when it came to the ethically murky waters of taking on the NID, he'd rather have Carter at his back than any other officer he'd served with. Not because she would follow him blindly, but precisely because she _wouldn't_. He'd had 2ICs who would cheerfully follow him off the edge of a cliff, but he'd much rather have one who'd dig her heels in and try to stop him from going over.

The trouble was, she thought he'd already _gone_ over. Carter was wrestling her own tangle of guilt and lingering grief right now, and she probably wouldn't _let_ herself believe that this was all a hoax for fear of being brutally disappointed. And asking her to minutely analyse footage that purported to show him blowing his brains out would not exactly go towards clearing up those issues. Hell, that damn tape had given _him_ the willies, and he knew that it wasn't real.

So he needed someone a little less personally involved. That he could trust with his life, his sanity and his future employment prospects.

Well, that narrowed the field down nicely - to a big fat, fluffy zero.

He wouldn't trust Doctor Lee to tie his own shoelaces with a roadmap. Felger, he didn't trust not to cut his own throat with the map and then choke on the shoelaces. The rest of the scientists... he didn't even know most of their _names_. Any one or all of them could be in the pay of the NID.

An annoying voice rose over the hubbub of the room. It was lemon chicken guy from yesterday, this time taking the staff to task over the temperature of their eggs. His voice was somehow made for drilling right through your head, too shrill to ignore and set apart further by the Canadian accent.

Jack swivelled slowly in his chair. Wait. It was that guy. Canadian guy. McGoo? McPhee? The one Carter wanted to bitchslap into next week. What was he still doing here? Jack could have sworn he'd been shipped out to parts unknown and also-not-cared-about after that business with Anubis and the gate.

Apparently, somebody was playing a game of transfer tag with the guy. No surprises there. When even _Carter_ came out of your lab wanting to throttle you, you'd officially passed beyond 'personality issues' and into 'continued existence issues'.

Jack tapped the handle of his fork thoughtfully. McGeek had been the NID's boy wonder, but he was an asset, not an operative; he had too big a mouth to be part of anyone's agenda. Simmons had been pushing him as a replacement for Carter, but when that didn't fly he hadn't lifted a finger to stop the guy being transferred to Siberia. If he was still flavour of the month he'd be off-world right now, trying to crack whatever Easter egg the Asgard had left them before the good guys could get their act together.

So, item: one rejected ex-NID scientist with a major league attitude problem and an even bigger ego. Allegedly brilliant, but not so much so as he was personally convinced.

Jack would have to be a complete dumbass to consider using him for the job. But, on the other hand, enough time spent hanging around allegedly advanced aliens had taught him that sometimes, you had to be a dumbass to be a... wiseass.

The conspirators would _expect_ him to go to Carter. They might anticipate him turning to other SGC sources. What they _wouldn't_ have in place was a contingency plan for him getting his tech support from the most annoying man on Earth.

Confound your enemy by being randomly illogical. Now there was a technique that he excelled at.

Play ball.

* * *

So far as Jack could tell, his SF escort had disappeared after his first so-called session with Andrews. Even so, he did his best to divert suspicion with some circular meanderings. He spent several brief periods lurking outside Carter's lab, projecting the impression that he was debating over whether to go in and talk to her.

And to think his mom had told him it was a waste of time taking that drama class.

Once he'd established enough of a pattern to throw any bored camera-watcher off-track, he sidled innocently over to the lab where McKay was working. It was conveniently far from the presence of any other scientists, probably more a matter of good sense on their part than good luck on Jack's. He could hear McKay muttering away to himself as he worked, a constant verbal stream of invective against his tools, his coworkers, the military, the laughably simple nature of the projects he was assigned to, and the tragic waste of his staggering genius it represented.

Jack listened to this for considerably longer than he wanted to as he waited for McKay to shuffle around until he had his back to the door.

Then he pounced.

McKay let out an undignified squeak as Jack closed the lab door and loomed into his personal space.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded, mouth open but still full of power bar. Jack considered it a less than friendly way to welcome somebody you'd had a personal hand in almost killing with an unstable... hyperspace radiation X-302 window... thingie.

"O'Neill, Colonel. Two Ls," he reminded the scientist darkly. "On the O'Neill, not the Colonel. Although that has two Ls too. Actually," he added, somewhat spoiling the tone.

McKay, apparently deciding he was about to be annoyed rather than killed - no respect, Jack got no respect these days - narrowed his eyes. "Yes. Fine. Colonel. What pathetic little project do you intend to reassign me to now? Fixing the broken coffee machine in the biology lab? Updating the general's screensaver, perhaps? _Technical support_?" He pronounced the last as if it involved the scrubbing of large, filthy things with a very small toothbrush.

Jack showed him Andrews' card. "I need you to pull up a video file from this man's computer."

McKay gave the card a look of great disdain, although probably not for the same reasons Jack was inclined to. "Oh, please. I'm not helping you pirate pornography. There's a whole internet out there for you military types to indulge your perversions without dragging me into the middle."

Jack loomed a little harder. "It's a very important security issue. He's a suspected enemy agent. He has a video of alleged camera footage that may be falsified to conceal a crime." There. That sounded very authorised and professional, didn't it?

McKay folded his arms with a 'tsch' of expelled air. "Then show it to an AV lab technician. This monkey work is beneath my skills."

Time for a little applied psychology. He stood back. "Yeah. Carter said you'd say that."

The response was almost Pavlovian. "Wait, uh, Major Carter?" McKay exhibited the same crush-struck expression as every other guy in the science department. And a few of the ladies. "She sent you to me?"

"Actually, she told me to avoid you." He headed for the door.

"Huh." McKay tilted his head thoughtfully. "Well, she is threatened by my genius."

"Is that a fact?" he said wryly.

McKay gave him a confiding nod. "Jealousy is such an ugly emotion."

"I see." It was hard to even feel insulted on Carter's behalf when it was so goddamn ridiculous. Jack affected a contemplative expression. "So when she said, 'I wouldn't trust that hack with the security of his own laptop, never mind the fate of the entire Stargate program'...?"

"Lies. Scurrilous lies." McKay puffed up like a frog, and snapped his fingers imperiously for Jack to return the card. "I can solve your security issue in less time than it takes Major Carter to dream up her next unimaginative insult."

"Uh-huh." Jack's eyes were starting to burn in their sockets with the effort of not rolling.

To his credit, however, as soon as he took the business card McKay turned into a demon typing machine. "Andrews, yes - his security clearance is... Ha. These protocols are pathetic. I can't believe a so-called top-secret base has such laughable security. If I was writing these, I would- Oh, look, I'm in." He glanced up at Jack, the definition of smug, then turned back to the screen. "Looks like there's only one video file here. Presumably this is... huh."

He turned a second, more quizzical glance on Jack as the footage began playing. "That's you."

"Allegedly," Jack said evenly.

McKay started to push his chair back from the desk. "You know, on second thoughts, it occurs to me that this sort of thing probably requires special authorisation from the General, and I should probably- holy _crap_!" The video had just played out to its grim conclusion.

Jack leaned down over the white-faced and temporarily speechless McKay. He shook his finger at the screen. "That? Was not me. And I need you to prove it."

McKay regrouped with more speed than Jack would have given him credit for. "It's a fake," he realised, gripping the edge of the desktop to pull his swivel chair back towards the computer again.

"_Obviously_," Jack said through gritted teeth, sidestepping the sticky issue of Carter's supposed use of the healing device. The NID had probably planted him in his office with a head wound of their own creation to add veracity to their hoax. Maybe they'd counted on Carter trying to heal him all along - if she'd failed, the guilt would have taken down two good officers instead of one, and if she'd succeeded, they had evidence she _could_ work the tech if she was sufficiently motivated.

The best way to protect her from attempts at 'motivation' was to get to the bottom of this mess before it ensnared anyone else. He gestured impatiently at McKay. "So, do your-" he wiggled his fingers, "-hacky stuff and find out how they made it."

McKay flapped a dismissive hand at him, already typing. Jack wasn't about to assume he'd won the man's loyalty, but apparently, the puzzle had done enough to intrigue him. Scientists. You could make them run right into the jaws of death of their own free will if you framed it as a problem-solving exercise.

Jack would have liked to hover and provide encouraging glowers, but there was only so much time he could spend in the labs without it becoming suspicious. As it was, hopefully, anyone checking in on his movements on an occasional basis would assume he'd just been indulging in a bit of scientist-baiting. With him in his current bad mood and McKay being... McKay... no one would find that particularly suspicious.

He received no more than a vague grunt at his request to be kept apprised, but he assumed that someone who was a self-described genius could figure out how to locate Jack if it was necessary.

As for Jack, he intended to return to his quarters and crash for a while. He wasn't sure he could stand any more contact with people in the immediate future. It had been what Andrews would probably call an 'emotionally taxing' day.

* * *

The sarcophagus opens onto...

An office. It's his, but it's not. That bloodstain shouldn't be there.

"I didn't leave the room like this," he says to Daniel.

"No, you didn't." But Daniel's eyes are breathtakingly sad. "He did."

They turn, to see a body lying in state. It's Jack, but it isn't, because he's still right here. And the body doesn't look the way it ought to.

"He's not real."

"Yes he is." Daniel is all in black and hooded, his face covered by a veil. Grieving. "But so are you."

Daniel reaches out to touch his shoulder, but they're already moving further and further apart.

* * *

Jack snapped awake and upright with a gasp. A flash of movement caught the corner of his eye, and he was spinning and reaching for the sidearm he didn't have before he recognised his own face in the mirror.

He barely did. He looked haunted, and years older. The hair at his temples he'd been calling grey was no longer pretending to be anything but white. Did the sarcophagus steal years of your life?

Did the healing device?

"It's not real," he said, chasing the echoes of his dreams where those words almost made sense. But the dream-memories faded like frost-film, destroyed by the warmth of his attention, and the words just rang hollow and childish. He could swear that his self in the mirror was looking out at him with contempt.

A knock sounded at the door of his quarters, and Jack jumped again, uncertain whether it was the first he'd heard or a repeat of one that had woken him. God, his instincts were in tatters. He used rubbing a hand over his face to consciously replace the military mask, and went to answer the door.

It was General Hammond, making house calls again. Jack was fairly sure he ought to greet him with an insouciant quip, but that was a little beyond him right now. He settled for a slightly plaintive, "Sir?"

"Jack." Oh, boy. Hammond had his 'can't get through on the big red phone' grumpy eyebrows on.

"General." He straightened up, just in case it was something he'd done. He cast his mind back over the somewhat fuzzy outlines of the day gone by. Crap. Was this the ill-advised visit to his office coming back to bite him in the ass? Or had McKay decided to take his concerns up the ladder after all?

But Hammond's unhappiness, it seemed, was not directed at him. "I want you to know that this is not my choice, Colonel."

Okay. This is not the bad news you are looking for. He raised his eyebrows quizzically and went with the line that had served him well thus far. "...Sir?"

"The NID are pushing for the retrieval of the Asgard artefact to go ahead. The President agrees with them." Only the tightness of Hammond's jaw would betray for a second that he had any quibble with his Commander in Chief's decision-making process. "The mission's scheduled for 0900 hours tomorrow."

So. Not so much bad news as the kind of unbelievable reprieve that inevitably came with a sting in the tail. "And Andrews-?"

And here was clearly the source of Hammond's dissatisfaction. "-Has stated that in his opinion, you're not in immediate danger of repeating the incident, but he has _great_ reservations about you being allowed into the field without a fuller psychiatric assessment. And frankly, I agree."

Well, that was the kind of healthy vote of confidence you always wanted to hear from your CO. Jack tried to straighten up, and found his muscles were already vibrating with so much tension that he couldn't get any straighter. "General, I can guarantee you, I will be one hundred percent focused on the mission," he said, eyes fixed directly forward.

General Hammond gave him a small, sad, smile. "It's not the mission I'm worried about, son," he said, and squeezed Jack's shoulder.

Jack took a moment to be inordinately glad that the General hadn't tried to hug him.

Because the way his knees momentarily threatened to buckle would have been pretty hard to explain.


	5. Part 5

**Part V**

The world is pain.

The world is knives, drops of acid, pools of blood. Every one reflects a splintered fraction of his face; not one of them catches the whole picture.

It's an accurate reflection.

Only one face doesn't fit the pattern. Blue eyes and a golden glow and that goddamn cream knit sweater.

"Don't you ever get tired of this?"

"I don't understand how anyone could." The smile is kind, but the eyes are pushing. Push, push, push. Daniel doesn't know when to stop pushing.

"Yeah," he says. "That's always been your problem."

Gravity flips, and the mirror shards fall in a gentle silver rain. A thousand portraits of a dying man.

"Can't you tell which one is the real one?" Daniel's willing him to understand, but it's pretty simple really.

"They all could be."

"Yeah." A bitter flash of teeth. "That's always been your problem."

The rain descends and slices him to ribbons.

* * *

Jack ate breakfast before the mission briefing, but only out of long-established instinct to stockpile food in his stomach while it was available. If he waited for hunger to send up a flag, he'd never eat at all.

He'd thought he'd gotten by on starvation rations in Iraq, but Baal hadn't fed or watered him at all. Why bother, when the body would be killed and reborn long before it starved? He'd never lived long enough to get properly hungry.

He'd lost weight, but not as much as he should have done under the circumstances. It would have been easy to put back on if he'd remembered how to eat when he came back. His time as a POW had served him there, the training in choking down rancid, unidentified slop necessary to get through even his favourite dishes. His appreciation for flavour had come back with time, but his appetite was still MIA. His body had forgotten that it needed fuel to live; life was something that would be thrust on him repeatedly whether he fought for it or not.

Chalk that up as another one for his list of arguments he couldn't share with Andrews. Why would he have tried suicide? If there was anything Baal's torture had conditioned into him, it was the conviction that death would not be an escape.

Jack arrived at the briefing room ten minutes early - eight minutes more than his usual punctuality allowed. Betraying his agitation, but screw it. He'd damned well earned the right to be properly agitated.

As the room filled up, there was a disheartening lack of friendly faces. Hammond still looked grave and Carter haggard and worried. Doc Fraiser was there, wearing her usual steely face of 'you shouldn't be doing this yet' disapproval, as was - much to his disgust - 'Doctor' Andrews.

Rounding out the numbers were Lieutenant Menard and Colonel Pierce, officers Jack knew but not well. He had no beef with them, but he didn't like the thought of taking them in place of Daniel and Teal'c, and he sure as hell didn't like the fact that Pierce ranked Carter. Whether the order came from Hammond or higher up the pile, someone didn't trust her to make the correct call if Jack started acting erratically.

He wasn't sure if he was more insulted on her behalf or his own.

"We received the message from Supreme Commander Thor eleven days ago," Carter began, the image of crisp professionalism. No one would know she'd been close to collapsing in a teary heap the last time they'd encountered each other. "It was a brief holographic communication, apparently pre-recorded, requesting that Colonel O'Neill retrieve an item left to his safekeeping at a set of Stargate coordinates."

Oh yeah, she'd definitely lost weight. The hollowness of her cheeks was all too obvious from this familiar vantage point across the table, and makeup couldn't cover the traits of long term tiredness. Dammit. She wasn't taking care of herself, and he was exactly the wrong person to try and tackle her about it. Carter took any approach from him as an implicit reprimand, and started working insane equations where _Carter get some sleep_ became _Carter your work isn't good enough_ became _Carter start working longer hours_.

"We ran the coordinates through our database and came up with P41-12C." She brought up a series of scans and MALP footage on the screen, which he ignored. "We'd previously taken a UAV survey of the planet, but it was low on our exploration list due to the lack of any signs of indigenous population or structures."

She swallowed. "We sent a scientific team through to try and retrieve the device, but they were unable to approach due to a forcefield protecting the cave where it was located. We examined the controls-" read: I personally attacked them with a screwdriver, "-but the technology was clearly of Asgard design and beyond our capabilities to tamper with."

Hammond sat forward. "And you believe the forcefield will only lower for Colonel O'Neill?"

"Yes, sir. It's the most reasonable assumption. Supreme Commander Thor was quite clear that he was entrusting the device to the Colonel personally. And the Asgard have had..." her voice hitched momentarily, "opportunity to copy the Colonel's DNA or fingerprints for identification purposes if necessary."

Boy, that was a cheerful thought. Jack raised his hands to make air quotes. "And we have no idea what this 'device' actually _is_?"

Carter paled a little, seeming to take it as a personal attack. "No sir. Only that the Asgard considered it important that it not fall into the wrong hands."

The wrong hands probably including whatever NID group had orchestrated this bid to take him out of the picture in the first place. He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face.

Apparently the feeling was contagious. Doctor Fraiser sat forward. "Once again, General, I must insist that bringing Colonel O'Neill into things in this way is highly irresponsible."

"I understand that, Doctor, and I share your reservations-" gee, thanks, George, "-but under the circumstances, this is our only option." Hammond didn't look happy about it. "While I am reluctant to allow _any_ of my people out into the field before they've been fully cleared by medical professionals, the fact is that this is a matter of interplanetary diplomacy, and no substitute for the Colonel will do!"

His voice rose higher towards the end than it usually did in _pre_-mission briefings, betraying his level of tension. At least he did Jack the grace of omitting what _kind_ of medical professionals, although Jack was sure that Pierce and Menard were adding Andrews' presence up with the wilder rumours and coming up with five.

Speaking of... The shrink oozed his way forward with an ingratiating smile. "It's my assessment that - while I would have preferred a few more sessions to work on his memory - Colonel O'Neill's state of mind poses no threat to the operation of this particular mission."

A ringing endorsement. Jack scowled. Opposite him, Fraiser bridled, clearly less than thrilled to have her opinion second-guessed.

Yeah, this one was definitely going down in the annals of most enjoyable briefings ever.

"It should be a fairly straightforward operation." Carter, bless her, shoved things back onto a less personal track. "SG-3 are still standing guard over the cave entrance, and there's been no evidence of any activity on the planet. The address is one of the ones-" she faltered for a beat so slight he wasn't sure if he'd imagined it, "-the Colonel entered into the system under the influence of the Ancient database, so there's no reason to believe that the Goa'uld are even aware of the address."

At last, some good news. Jack sat up in his chair. "Straightforward snatch and grab, sir," he said to the General, projecting confidence. "Nothing to it."

Hammond reluctantly inclined his head. "Very well. Godspeed, Colonel."

Jack avoided his gaze as they left the room.

* * *

"Colonel!" McKay came scurrying up to him as he was on his way out of the locker room.

"You analysed that footage?" Jack pulled the scientist with him into the thankfully deserted room.

"Yes, but, uh-" McKay had the wide, panicked eyes of someone utterly unused to conspiracy. He broke off and jumped as someone passed by the outside of the locker room, and Jack barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

He grabbed the scientist by the lapels and drew him as close as he could get without poking him in the face with the beak of his cap. "_What_... did you... find out?" he grated.

"It's been altered!" he blurted in a desperate squeak. Jack let him drop.

At _last_, a goddamn break. "Can you prove it?"

"Yes, but-"

"Good. Keep the evidence until I get back from this mission. Don't tell _anyone_ what you've found, okay?" Jack turned to stride off towards the gate room, wishing he had the time to go to the General with this right now. If he left McKay with the task of briefing Hammond, he and his pet ego would probably invite half a dozen people along to be an adoring audience, and that could be disastrous.

"Colonel-" The scientist hustled along in his wake, probably intending to argue.

"Not now, McKay!" He held up a suppressing hand.

McKay stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and bellowed after him. "Hey, crazy Colonel person! Just shut up and listen to me for a moment, if you can _possibly_ take the time out of your busy day after I've spent the entire night working on your-"

Jack returned to him in three long strides and shook a warning finger. "Do you understand the meaning of 'under the radar'?" he hissed.

McKay's eyes were still wide, but with some emotion other than fear. "I've been trying to tell you," he said, in what he probably thought was a hushed tone. "The footage has been altered, but not how you think. The video is genuine. I've scanned it up, down, left, right for any sign of mimic or hologram technology. There was no trace - and believe me, if _I_ found no trace, then there was no trace to be found. But then," he gave a self-congratulatory chortle, "I thought to look beyond the obvious."

"In what way?" Jack asked, with a slow, lazy ease that was his substitute for justifiable homicide.

McKay's malleable face fell into seriousness again. "The video footage hasn't been altered... but the timestamp has. That recording is real - but it's from over two years ago."

Jack stared at him, mind completely and utterly blank on every level. "What does that mean?" he asked finally.

McKay contorted his mouth into the start of a word, then let it slacken out with the sound unvoiced. "I... have absolutely no idea," he admitted.

* * *

Jack did _not_ set out on the mission to P41-12C on autopilot, because that level of distraction was completely irresponsible and likely to get him and his team killed. Instead, he confined McKay's bizarre revelation to his overcrowded box of things not to think about at present, and continued mission prep as normal.

As normal as it could get, anyway, with Carter jumpy as a long-tailed cat and Menard and Pierce at his back instead of Teal'c and- Jonas. Jack was at least still nominally in charge, but he was pretty sure that would stop meaning doodly squat if he tried to use that authority for anything other than prescribed mission objectives.

In other words, this was 'Let's Pretend Jack's in Charge Theatre'. It was a familiar show, but usually he had a better idea of what to expect from the supporting cast. He bent the peak of his stiff new cap down into a more comfortable position, wiped his scowl away before the customary glance up at the General, and then turned towards the gate at Hammond's nod.

"All right, people, let's move." He passed through the event horizon at a brisker pace than his usual stroll.

P41-12C, henceforth known as Planet Dustball, was about as unexciting as a trip across the galaxy could get. The sky was a duller shade of grey than his hair, and the ground was... dirt. Just dirt. Not even excitingly coloured dirt as one might see on the surface of Mars, just plain old brown and dusty dried-out earth. A few scraggly clumps of weeds were all that passed for foliage, and outcroppings of rock the only landmarks. There was a breeze with half-hearted aspirations towards 'nippy'. It was the sort of place that the Goa'uld would take one look at and then turn around and go home because it didn't match any of their outfits.

Good place to hide something valuable. Not such a great place to vacation.

Carter took point without being asked to, but then again, she'd been here before. "The cave where the artefact is located is approximately one click in this direction, sir." She seemed more comfortable now they were back out in the field, and he allowed her to keep the lead with a nod. Jack let Menard and Pierce fall into position without explicitly ordering them so. He had a feeling this mission was going to go smoother if he avoided verbal commands as much as possible. His hypothetical authority would hold up better if he didn't raise it up for public scrutiny.

They started walking.

Satisfied after a while that Jaffa were not going to come pouring out from behind the planet's three and a half pieces of viable scenery, Jack unlocked his mental box and let a big fuzzy ball of 'what the _hell_?' out.

Two years ago.

...What?

No matter which way he twisted that little revelation, it made less than no sense. Andrews had security footage of Jack shooting himself in the head. It was, against all logical reason, apparently not faked. But the timestamp had been doctored to make it look recent when it had really been filmed over two years ago.

...What?

He had not shot himself in the head two years ago. He was fairly sure he would remember. And furthermore, someone would have said something about it. Daniel was - had been - _was_ a real 'hey, let's talk about that time you shot yourself in the head' kind of guy.

Unless two years ago wasn't what Jack _thought_ was two years ago. Could he have been in a coma? Frozen in some alien stasis doohickey, only to be thawed out when they discovered they had need of him? That had an unwelcome whiff of plausibility to it. Could Andrews have made some weasel recommendation that they hide the passage of time from him?

But he seemed whole and healthy now, at least as much as always, so why had they kept him on ice? Unless he'd been magically upgraded from incurable when the NID had decided they needed him enough to pressure Carter into using the healing device. His mouth thinned.

He needed more information. And there was only one person on this planet - and possibly the one he'd just left - that he trusted to give it to him.

As they rounded the next corner, they came upon what was clearly the location Thor had directed them to. Jack used his crazy detective skills to figure this out, based on the presence of SG-3 and a cave mouth bordered by vaguely Viking-esque designs. Also, the big blue glowing forcefield thingie.

"Colonel!" Reynolds and his men couldn't have looked more surprised if Jack had appeared wearing a bikini. Which was a mental image he hastily tried to banish. Thankfully, Carter came to the rescue.

"The forcefield controls are here, sir." She pointed him at a notch cut into the side of the carved doorway that looked like it was designed to fit a human grip. "We were able to determine that there's some kind of power source behind the rock, but it's impervious to any kind of-"

Jack reached out and closed his fingers around the grip. It just felt like cool rock under his fingers, but the forcefield blocking the doorway collapsed with a descending hum. Reynolds reared back a little in startlement.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "That all you need me for?" he said, a touch wryly.

"I don't know, sir." Carter frowned over a handheld... dooberie she'd just produced from God knew where. "The surrounding rock is blocking the energy readings. The Asgard may have placed further protections inside in the event that somebody managed to brute-force a way around the forcefield." He could tell her brain was still whirring away at how she could have solved that problem even though it was now academic.

Jack stepped aside, right hand still snug in the notch, and ushered her into the cave ahead of him. "...Majors first."

Carter trotted ahead eagerly, too deep into science mode to bother giving him a dubious look. She was still checking her dooberie for any change in the readings. Jack swung into the cave after her, pulling his hand off the doorway once he was all the way inside.

Half a heartbeat later, the forcefield fizzed back to life. Carter spun to face it, raising her weapon instinctively and then lowering it once she saw what had happened.

"Guess it's self-closing," Jack noted. Colonel Pierce appeared on the other side of the doorway, tinted several shades of Smurf and moving his mouth in words that were blanked out by the forcefield. Jack gave him a mini wave.

"Colonel Pierce?" Carter had her radio to her mouth, but Pierce just patted his and gave a pantomime shrug. Reynolds lurked in the corner of their restricted field of view, looking concerned and equally Smurf-like.

Carter turned her attention back to Jack. "Sir, the forcefield's blocking our communications. We should-"

Jack ignored her and stepped up closer to the field. "We'll go on ahead," he said, exaggerating the mouth movements and gesturing for the benefit of those on the other side. Pierce looked perturbed. So did Carter.

"Colonel, I really think it's best that we-"

"Carter!" He snapped her into silence a little more sharply than he should have. Jack made an effort to modulate his voice. "This thing is only supposed to open up for me, right?"

"As far as we know, sir, but..."

"Then maybe we should restrict the number of gatecrashers, hmm?" He raised his eyebrows pointedly.

Carter set her jaw, probably to make some stubborn point about how if _she_ was inside, there was no reason not to bring everyone else in. But as it happened, Jack did have a compelling reason. It just wasn't tied particularly well to their mission objectives.

"Carter." He took her by the shoulders and steered her away from the eyeline of those outside the forcefield. Pierce and Reynolds were probably having a mutual cow, but hell, they could barbeque it later. "I think it's time you and me had a little talk," he said with a grimace of a smile.

"Sir?" She stared at him, all impossibly wide blue eyes like a doll's.

"The jig's up, Major," he told her. "I may not know what's going on, but I know something _is_ going on, and I'm not going to hand over whatever honking great space gadget is in these caves until you explain to me what!" His voice was steadily rising, and as he loomed into her personal space he was more conscious than usual of the extra inches he had on her.

Carter took a breath, clearly gathering her professionalism in with it. "Colonel-"

"No!" He slammed his hand against the rock face with more force than he intended. "Don't do this to me, Carter," he warned. "Just _tell_ me. What's really going on here? Why is everyone conspiring to keep the truth from me? Because I know that _you_ know that this isn't true."

Carter's cool finally snapped. "Sir, we are _trying_ to help you!" she burst out. "Why can't you trust us? Why can't you ever accept that we might have your best interests at heart? Why can't you ever just trust other people to..." Her voice dissolved, and she turned away, swallowing, before he could see more than the first spill of tears.

A nicer man would have backed off and given her some space. A nicer man wouldn't be this sick and tired of never getting any goddamn answers.

"Not good enough, Carter," he said, striding around her so they were face to face once more. "No more head games. No more half answers. I just want the truth. Why was I in that hospital bed?"

"You _had_ an accident," she insisted stubbornly.

"Why don't I have any injuries?" he pressed, relentless.

"I told you, the healing device-"

"And where the hell is Teal'c? Really? Why isn't he here? Why, if this is supposed to be true, would he somehow have some better reason, some _other_ place to be than to show up at my alleged _deathbed_-"

"He left!" she shouted over him, and looked almost surprised at herself. "He left," she repeated, the words a fading breath. "After you..."

"After I _what_, Carter?" he demanded, inches from her face.

"After you _died_!" Fury exploded out of her all at once. "After _you_ left. After you left us behind."

Jack pulled back, feeling realisation wash over him in a cold, numbing wave. "Not me," he said quietly. "Him."

Silence. Carter just stood there, cheeks flushed and fists clenched, staring down in anguish at the floor.

Jack took a single step forward to speak to her from close up once again. "Where's the goddamn mirror, Carter?" he said tersely.


	6. Part 6

**Part VI**

There was a long and heavy silence that coated everything like setting concrete. Finally, Carter blinked and sighed.

"There is no quantum mirror," she said.

"Carter..." Jack closed his eyes.

"We used an inter-reality retrieval device," she continued, still looking at the floor. "I designed it, after... I designed it. In my head. But I never intended to build it, never intended to use it-"

Jack let his air out in a long, slow breath and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Until Thor showed up, with his very special eyes-only message," he filled in.

Her eyes beseeched him to understand. "The NID were talking about digging up your body, using acquired technology to... temporarily reanimate the flesh-"

"Not _my_ body, Carter," he corrected, but grimaced nonetheless. He sighed and paced back and forth in frenetic activity. "And it didn't occur to you to just _ask_?" he said, whirling about to face her. "'Hey, Jack, you mind waltzing over to our reality for a couple of minutes so we can borrow your DNA?' 'Gee whizz, let me just check my appointments diary. Oh, it's okay - saving the world from the Goa'uld isn't pencilled in until Thursday. Sign me right up!'"

Carter looked miserable. "I truly am sorry, sir. It wasn't my decision."

He waved a hand by the side of his head. "So the whole... head wound scenario? Somebody whack me over the head with a sock full of sand to add a little... _cinéma-vérité_?" He still hadn't quite banished the remnants of that headache.

She pulled an awkward face. "The entropic side effects were stronger than I anticipated. The quantum mirror must have some kind of buffering mechanism that allows a traveller to breach the wall between realities without suffering an immediate-" She read from his face that it would probably be smart to switch tracks. "You completed the transfer unconscious," she finished. "You were in a coma for several days, and Janet wasn't certain if there would be any neurological damage when you woke up. The NID argued that given-" she swallowed, "-what happened to our Colonel O'Neill, your mental state had to be considered unpredictable and you might react badly if you were informed of the transfer between realities."

"Yadda, yadda, yadda." He could fill in the blanks from there, though whatever joker had decided that convincing him he was _suicidal_ was the best way to go had a lot to answer for. Then a thought struck, and he froze, narrowing his eyes dangerously. "Is it _reversible_?"

"Yes, sir," she said, quiet but assured. Then she grimaced. "Most probably," she added, compelled by her usual field honesty.

Jack scowled. "I really wish you hadn't added that."

"Me too, sir," she said with a thin smile.

He couldn't help but smile back. In any universe, Carter was Carter.

He sighed, and ran a hand back through his hair. "Right. Let's go see what the Asgard left us in their gift bag."

* * *

The cave contained a holographic message from Thor. Apparently, in this particular reality, the Asgard had been forced to withdraw all presence from the Milky Way galaxy by the Replicators. Thor, unaware of the other Jack's demise, had left him a communicator for emergency contact. To Jack's relief, Carter didn't think the device itself was keyed exclusively to his DNA.

"Most likely Thor wasn't sure who was in charge at the SGC. We've been out of contact with the Asgard for... a while. Before we lost contact we were having problems with rogue elements stealing technology from our allies. The forcefield must have been a countermeasure to make sure we could only access this if you were still affiliated with the project."

Jack tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. "So. No magic bullet?"

"No, sir," she said regretfully. She tucked the communicator carefully away in a padded box. "But even so, just knowing we have a means of contacting the Asgard in an emergency gives us more possibilities."

"Yeah." He couldn't help but think he'd have felt a whole lot better about this little cross-reality jaunt if it had ended in the retrieval of something that would have useful applications for his own reality, not just this one.

As it was, he just felt exceedingly tired.

"Come on, Carter," he sighed. "Let's boogie on back to base."

* * *

Pierce was emphatically not happy about Jack and Carter wandering off alone, but he was unhappy in a non-verbal, you're-still-nominally-in-charge way, so Jack didn't give a very large fraction of a damn. Especially since this particular chain of command wasn't technically his to screw up. Once the - somewhat edited - debriefing was over, Jack lingered behind to talk to the General.

Hammond met his eyes neutrally. "Major Carter told you the truth," he surmised. His tone gave no clue as to whether this was an annoyance, a relief, or very bad news for Major Carter.

Jack avoided giving confirmation. "You could have just _asked_ for my cooperation," he said simply, tucking his hands into his pockets.

Hammond gave him a tired smile. "If I'd been given any choice in the matter, son, I would have. But the NID insisted that you couldn't be trusted. They claimed that the... manner of your counterpart's death was evidence of an underlying mental instability." The lazy Texan drawl kept the words soft, but Jack could see the coals of anger burning behind the mask. "They managed to convince my superiors that a deception was in everyone's best interests."

Everyone's except Jack's, of course. But that wasn't the most pressing issue on his mind right now. He met Hammond's gaze seriously. "Sir... what really happened to the other O'Neill?"

Hammond closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, they were laced with a grief that Jack felt voyeuristic seeing. "Exactly what you were told, Colonel," he said, letting out his breath in a puff. "Twenty-six months ago, Colonel Jack O'Neill locked himself in his office and shot himself dead with his own service weapon. Nobody knows why."

Jack kept one hand in his pocket and gestured uncomfortably with the other. "And there wasn't-?"

"Major Carter ran herself ragged looking for evidence of alien involvement or foul play," the General said, still holding his gaze. "The investigation found nothing untoward."

"Which could just mean it was very well hidden," Jack said, feeling strangely obliged to defend the duplicate that he knew nothing about.

Hammond sighed. "Which could mean that," he said slowly. "But we can never know." He met Jack's eyes again. "Unless you can tell me for certain...?"

Jack thought of Abydos, and felt a knot of guilt and misery settle deep in his stomach. He gave a single shake of his head that was more of a sharp jerk, and looked down at his shoes.

There was a thick silence, during which he wouldn't have looked up for anything in the world. Then Hammond shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. Jack felt a warm glow of affection blossom in his chest as the General returned to all business.

"Major Carter assures me that the transfer back to your own reality should be a relatively straightforward process," he said. "The retrieval device was designed to bridge between two specific realities only, so there's no danger of you being sent back to the wrong place."

Not that he'd been _worried_ about that before the General brought it up.

"So no further O'Neill-napping for fun and profit?" he said.

"No." Hammond set his jaw. "I will be making my opinion very clear to the Pentagon and the White House about how this whole debacle could have been avoided if the NID had been prepared to extend reasonable trust to a good man and a good officer."

He stood up and came around the table to shake hands before Jack had a chance to make a quip about who those two guys were.

"I apologise for the harm that's been done to you here, son," he said. He clasped Jack's arm. "We'll send you back where you belong with all due speed, and our gratitude for your willingness to help us despite the deception."

Jack would be glad to get out of this reality, which was beginning to give him the uncomfortable feeling of being present at his own eulogy. He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Thank you, sir," he said, and pointed back over his shoulder. "If you don't mind, I'll just go find Carter and-"

Hammond dismissed him with an understanding nod. "God be with you, Jack," he said softly.

Jack straightened to attention as they exchanged salutes, and then turned to head for Carter's lab... and hopefully, home.

* * *

Carter's reality crossing device looked like the bastard son of a set of rings, a naquadah reactor and a metal toilet seat. She seemed determined to explain and apologise for its limitations, as if he would somehow be less impressed once he knew the specs.

"It was custom built to connect to one particular alternate reality," she told him. "It's far beyond our current technology to build a device that can switch between multiple realities like the quantum mirror. We don't have the naquadria resources for a second transfer, anyway: the device draws so much power that the link can only be established for microseconds before the power source is completely drained." She looked momentarily uncomfortable. "In order to provide the best odds of success I had to analyse your known past movements and calculate the highest probability time window for finding you in a consistent location."

Jack worked that one out. "You stole me from my own bed in the middle of the night?"

"Yes, sir." She gave an awkward grimace. "On a Tuesday. At four thirty-two a.m."

"Good to know I'm not predictable," he said wryly. "So, what, you're going to kick me back out in the same place?" That could make selling the explanation for his disappearance a lot more difficult. Great. _Another_ mental health assessment to look forward to.

"Actually, sir, I can put you back anywhere we can reasonably move the device to," Carter said helpfully. "But it has to be somewhere with minimal traffic where you're not in danger of colliding with another human being."

"That sounds like my bed," he said.

Carter grinned. It was good to see it. "I was thinking the empty storage room on the corner of level twenty-two," she volunteered.

"That works too," he conceded.

* * *

Siler's people relocated the reality device for them. Carter tinkered with it for a while before pronouncing it good.

Then things got awkward.

"So, I... guess I'll toddle on back to my reality then," Jack said, running a hand through his hair. Carter gave him an abortive smile in response. The silence stretched on, thick and lumpy.

Finally he had to break it. "Carter-"

"Sir-" she said, at exactly the same time. He waved a hand, surrendering the floor to her, but she didn't continue.

Okay, this was getting them nowhere. "Spit it out, Carter," he suggested, not unkindly.

She shook her head. "Nothing, sir. I'll just go and set up the controls outside the room."

She made it as far as the doorway before stopping and turning abruptly. "I just need to know why you did it," she blurted out. "Why-?"

Jack stepped forward and caught both of her forearms. "Carter..." He shook his head helplessly. "I _didn't_ do it. And I don't know why he did. But I know there wasn't anything you could have done to stop him."

Her face crumpled into an expression on the knife-edge between smile and tears. This time, he didn't resist the impulse to pull her forward into a hug.

Funny how you forgot how _warm_ other human beings were, and how substantial. From a distance, they might as well be holograms, as unreal as Daniel standing in the cell. Hugging Carter was a world of awkward for numerous different reasons, but it was also the most _grounded_ he'd felt, since... well, before the whole mess with Baal went down, and maybe months before it. From the outside, Carter looked fragile, but if she was this solid, then maybe he was too.

Jack cupped the back of her head for a moment, then stepped back and released her. The smile she gave him glittered with unshed tears, but it was strong and genuine. He smiled back.

Carter broke the moment first and turned away, brisk professionalism back in place. "I'll start the machine from outside. The transfer will be instantaneous, so you need to be standing within the taped-off area." She smirked at his undignified hop-shuffle backward. "Hopefully, the entropic side effects should be less severe this time, as you're crossing the barrier between realities in the normative direction."

"Yes. That," he said wisely. Carter grinned.

"Good luck, sir," she said, and stepped over to activate the controls. Jack was pretty sure that she deserved some kind of emotional admission as a parting gesture, although the idea made his chest seize up with panic.

"Carter..." he began awkwardly.

Her smile took on a wistful flavour. "I know, sir," she said. She flipped the switch.

The world fuzzed away into static.

* * *

Jack opened his eyes to a vision of the infirmary ceiling. Still. Again. Some more. He heaved a weighty sigh and didn't bother with the effort of sitting up. "Any idea if we're in Kansas, Toto?" he asked the room in general.

"O'Neill." Teal'c loomed into view. He was unsmiling, but in a pleased way. "You have returned."

"Good to see you, T." He lifted one arm in a lazy thumbs-up.

"Sir!" Carter appeared at Teal'c's shoulder, smiling broadly. _His_ Carter, this time, if he trusted other-Carter to be right about the impossibility of having dumped him in a third reality. And he did. This Carter looked tired, but nowhere near as worn-down and hollowed out as the Carter of the other reality.

A third face popped up, grinning inanely. "Colonel! You're awake."

He was even glad to see Jonas.

Almost.

"Hey, kids." Jack converted the thumbs-up into a minimalistic wave. "What's happening?"

Carter apparently took this as a request for a status report rather than a greeting. "You've been unconscious for a couple of hours." She vacillated. "Er, that we know of. You were found in a storage closet on level twenty-two, but we're not sure how long you were in there. You went missing after signing out and returning home nine days ago. We still don't know how you got back on the base."

"Yeah. Funny story, that," he said wryly.

Doctor Fraiser bustled in. "Well, I'm afraid it's going to have to wait, Colonel." She ushered the rest of SG-1 toward the door. "We have no way of knowing how long you may have been unconscious before you were found, and I need to do a thorough examination."

"Joy," he said, and shot a dark look at his rapidly departing teammates. Where was their sense of solidarity now?

He groaned as Fraiser produced the ever-present penlight.

"Doc, do you have to keep poking that thing in my eyeball every ten minutes?" he complained. "I can guarantee you, there is _nothing_ wrong with the inside of my head."

And for the first time in a while, he thought that might really be true.

* * *

The sarcophagus opens onto-

-His front room. The couch faces the rippling circle of an open Stargate.

"That all that's on?" He takes a beer from Daniel.

"You want to change the channel?"

He's in his BDUs, but the GDO is missing. "I lost the remote."

Daniel stretches out a hand, and the chevrons start to rotate. "I know where you're going."

He's glad someone does. "What if I don't get there?"

A smile. "Oh, I think you will."

The chevrons lock into position. Jack adjusts his cap. "Let's move it out."

They step through the Stargate together.

**End**


End file.
